Collectivism versus Personal Responsibility
"Get up, Stand up. Stand up for your rights." Bob Marley and the Wailers
Listen to the Audio File for this article here.
I guess the primary question is this. Do you wish to direct your own life, making your own decisions, or would you prefer to have someone lay it all out for you so you can live in accordance with someone else’s plan? The answer you chose is completely ok with me.
This article is intended to be an exploration. And I should state up front that I have always been a swinging voter. I have cast votes for Labor, Liberal and Greens, multiple times each since 1978.
What is Collectivism?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a theory or political system based on the principle that all of the farms, factories, and other places of work in a country should be owned by or for all the people in that country.”
The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as:
1. The principles or system of ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the people collectively, usually under the supervision of a government.
2. The socialistic theory or principle of centralization of all directive, social and industrial power, especially of control of the means of production, in the people collectively, or the state: the opposite of individualism.
3. The doctrine that land and capital should be owned by society collectively or as a whole; communism.
I was born into a time of East versus West, Communist Eastern Block versus the Capitalist West. The Cold War brought extreme tensions as each side beseeched its righteousness as “the better way”.
Ultimately, the Soviet Union collapsed and most of its member states moved away from centrally planned and controlled economies to the market economies of the West.
Did communism fail? Or did the people who ruled communist countries fail? That could be debated for generations, and many would never move beyond the beliefs they have bound their minds to.
Is Capitalism successful? The same goes here. Great successes continue to occur, but many still live close to the poverty line and many abuse power. Is that the system, or the people within the system?
What is Personal Responsibility?
There are perhaps few people who understand personal responsibility at its most fundamental level. Many associate it with blame or guilt, but it is so much more than that and perhaps the purest form of existence.
True personal responsibility is a deep knowing that we are the creators of everything we experience. Now before you start jumping up and down and screaming “What about….!!!”, things happen. People get caught in earthquakes. But even a person who is caught in an earthquake, and who may be injured and lose all their possessions, can still decide how they will experience their circumstances.
From Viktor Frenkl:
“The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity...”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning
Personal responsibility is the capacity to learn from mistakes and bad choices to a level where the viewpoints and decisions made on the path to that event can be recognised and owned, and the intentions behind them too, recognised and owned.
Achieving a high level of personal responsibility is a spiritual quest. For many it is a lifelong journey. Blame and justification are red flags that suggest personal responsibility has been abandoned.
Developing a deeply honest sense of personal responsibility is perhaps the most complete form of freedom. In this place, nobody or nothing can make you feel how you do not choose to feel.
Never would I suggest that everyone should immediately become fully personally responsible. That would be both cruel and impossible. But I believe that every individual presents many moments where they can be invited to explore personal responsibility.
I believe that education in this direction could be part of our school curricula.
What is Happening Today?
The Left side of politics in most countries are the champions of collectivism. Some are moderate in the degree of central planning and control they wish to achieve. Others are more extreme.
The Right side of politics is more routed in the rights of the individual, the freedom of personal choice and the freedom of enterprise. This of course can extend to giving a great deal of freedom to big business, which some may argue against.
I often find it interesting to see how many on each side will change their tune when their circumstances change. None of us can claim to be a perfect human.
The left has traditionally been the champions of the strugglers and the downtrodden. Their social policies have always been about supporting people who either struggle to support themselves or who may be at risk of oppression.
Trade Unions, for example, have been the backbone of support for the worker, standing up to any form of bullying, domination, or mistreatment by employers. Whilst most employers are honorable in their intentions, there are many who are not so the unions give workers the support and protection they need. But, just as there are deceitful and self-serving employers, there are similar types occupying positions of power within trade unions.
The Left has traditionally campaigned on social policies, championing unemployment benefits, strong employment laws, social security, healthcare, and abundant community services. A product of this is very large government.
The Right has traditionally campaigned on the growth and expansion of business, offering citizens the freedom to start and build businesses, to expand, employ others and build wealth. They believe that a thriving economy creates ample employment, and all people have the opportunity to earn a living and spend their income as they choose. Often, the Right will move toward smaller Government.
They tend to place less emphasis on social welfare, preferring to inspire all able people to find their way into the workplace to earn a living, to be able to fend for themselves and build the confidence to succeed. Sometimes, this can be carried out in a less inspiring and more brutish fashion.
The Left tends to be the Labor parties of the UK, Australia and New Zealand and the Democrats in America. The Right tends to be the Liberals and Nationals in Australia, the Nations in New Zealand, the Conservatives in the UK and the Republicans in the USA. The Left are often referred to as Liberals and the Right as Conservatives.
Until 20 or 30 years ago, it seemed that the elites of societies were more conservative leaning. Wealth meant conservative. But this has changed as the Leftists have entered the realm of the rich and powerful.
The Scourge of Modern Living
As societies become wealthier, significant change envelopes the people. The need to struggle, to fight for survival and safety diminishes. The daily effort demanded by survival is diminished. Resilience wanes and the quest for status and comfort takes over. Attention tends to be more on self and a close inner circle than on the welfare of the broader community.
As Dr Tess Lawrie recounted in one of her recent articles:
It has been said that civilisations progress through the following sequence:
‘From bondage to spiritual faith,
From spiritual faith to great courage,
From courage to liberty,
From liberty to abundance,
From abundance to complacency,
From complacency to apathy,
From apathy to dependence,
From dependence back into bondage.’
In my article from May last year “Tendencies Toward Narcissism” I discussed how people who have never had to struggle too much, may never have done the real work to develop a robust moral compass and become a confident version of who they really are. Instead, they jump on board some emotive cause and wave their arms around like some sort of savior. They signal to the world about how moral they are.
I get a sense that many among the elite have not had to get too much dirt under their fingernails and in a vain attempt to save their own souls, begin engaging in discourse around taking care of the downtrodden, the unfortunate and the marginalized. When they do this, they are damming good people who are struggling, into a life of dependance.
People who are uninspired become complacent. This erodes into apathy. They lose any fight they might have had to improve and get better. Soon, they are dependent.
It is interesting to see what happens to people who are not supported to seek out their own inspiration for their life, to find a genuine sense of purpose. Discouragement, self-criticism, and intense self-concern can follow. In a desperate search for belonging, younger people can find themselves identifying with some form of seemingly marginalized community.
The Negatives of the Right:
Too often, Right Wing Parties have been seen to lack compassion and care. The harshness of the Howard Government’s treatment of asylum seekers never sat well with me. The American led wars that seemed to arise under Republican leadership all turned out to be humanitarian disasters.
Further, the Right will sometimes engage in attempts at “Union Busting” which demonstrates to workers that they have no care. And the Right, in their support for big business, have often turned their back on the environment to suit the needs of business.
The Negatives of the Left:
Too often, the Left can put economies into extreme debt with big spending policies, whilst trying to tax the wealthy to pay for those policies. Some argue that it is often the wealthy who create the greatest opportunities for economic growth and that over-taxing them could be foolhardy.
The Left have realised, in recent years, that if you validate victimhood and marginalization, and then play white knight, then you create a voting bloc. The more people who feel oppressed, disadvantaged and forgotten, the more potential victims that need care, support, and possible rescue.
The NDIS has become a haven for dependent people. I am amazed what NDIS beneficiaries are allowed to claim funding for. Many of the examples of “one-on-one” support, costing upwards of $45 per hour to be a walking buddy for example, could be done in small groups. The cost of the NDIS is exploding as more and more people become completely dependent on the system.
The Voice to Parliament, I felt, was going to turn tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians into life-long dependents on the system. From my perspective, that is a most insidious form of abuse.
In recent years, it seems the elites on the left have become the patronizing white knights who righteously step in to take care of all those who have been traumatized by the era of the privileged white male.
Is it the System, or the People in the System?
In theory, anyone can argue for Marxism or Capitalism, or any other system. But for them to work, the people need to play their part. Every football coach will tell you they can win a game if they get all the players to execute the plan to 100% of their ability.
But that is not reality. People behave in strange ways. And perhaps the most destructive is the change that can occur in people when given power. For example, you can take a team of 5 people who work harmoniously together, and who have been for some time. Then, appoint one of them as supervisor. There is a reasonable risk that the power will take over the person’s thinking and the culture of the group will either erode or collapse.
We have seen it countless times with Politicians who start out extremely popular and finish up being hated. Greed and selfishness are also factors that can kill a system.
There is a huge Marxists movement at Melbourne University. Ken Phillips from Self Employed Australia attended their conference to seek to understand their motivations.
A significant part of their lament was that they would not be able to afford to purchase a house in the future and that capitalism is the cause. When I read that I thought, “No it’s not the cause. Greed is.” Greed drove real estate prices up.
Until we come together to support each other to be fairer in our dealings, more honest with our intentions and more committed to handling our vices, people will always “spoil the system”.
Attempts to Level the Playing Field
The Left seem deeply committed to leveling the playing field by identifying privilege, calling it out, and then artificially elevating the standing of those who have not deserved privilege. Privileged white male has almost become a slogan.
There are so many things wrong with this. For example, just because someone’s family enjoyed wealth and influence, does not mean that person will choose to take self-serving advantage.
Second, attempts to make things fairer by “paying back” to disadvantaged sectors can be fraught with danger. Here is a simple example.
Let’s say I am playing football, and the umpire misses a blatant infringement against me and calls for play to continue. I should have received a free kick and may well have kicked a goal.
As the system goes now, that is tough luck. I need to learn to integrate those disappointments and keep working hard at my game. But what would happen if officials went to the umpire at the break and said, “You have to pay a free kick to John because you missed one and now you owe him one.” The umpire will then be required to treat an opposition player unfairly in order to give me an unearned free kick. This can never work.
It is impossible to create artificial equality. Every sane person knows this. So, Politicians who are doing it are most probably strategizing to win votes, and the people they are willing to offend are those who will probably not vote for them anyway.
The elevation of minority groups is a clear sign that the Left are creating new voting blocs. But this is never a partnership forged in goodwill, ethical intention, and moral decency. For this reason alone, it will end in catastrophe. Beware a crocodile offering free rides across the river.
To quote American author Michael Shellenberger, “The truth comes out eventually. Reality always bats last.”
People are Naturally Creators
If people feel inspired to use their talents, they will create. They will explore their ideas, their inspiration, and their talents to create useful things. It could be a product or service, or it could be a form of art or music. It could be a procedure or methodology.
Genuine inspiration arises from a desire to offer something useful to one’s clan, group, society, or perhaps to the world. It is an offer of something helpful that will benefit another person or a group of people. It is never about taking.
If successful, the person will receive a form of reward that empowers the next level of inspiration. The reward could be money, praise, acknowledgement or even a prize or recognition. This is one of the natural and most powerful flows of human life.
What happens when you try to flatten out the playing field and make everyone equal? Such an attempt to be fair, like giving every kid in the football team a trophy, kills the inspiration to strive. Over time, if this thinking is allowed to take hold of a society, people stop striving to live a thrilling life and end up doing only what they must do to survive. The average person becomes little more than a useful idiot in someone else’s plan.
I remember my son having a tough time at school when he was in grade 2. His mum and I had broken up and his mum was battling addiction. The situation was hard on him. But it all changed one day when his teacher came to me beaming with a huge smile. “He had a win today. Did you know he has an incredible ear for music? He is perfect pitch.” In his first music class, she discovered him playing a tune on recorder by ear whilst listening to a group of older students.
She said to me, “Kids just need to have a win somewhere and their schooling gets on track.” And his did. Music carried him through school. Academically, he had no interest, but his music gave him a deeply robust self-belief.
If we fail to allow kids to find their own gifts, then their talents do not flourish. From that place, there will be no disruptors. Society becomes bland and boring.
As former Soviet Spy, Jack Barsky, said when he stepped outside East Berlin for the first time in the 1970’s, “I could not believe the color. Everything on the other side of the wall was grey and brown”.
Our challenge as a society is to support kids to find their gifts, not to cookie cut them all into being the same. We need to help kids to not drag themselves down through self-criticism and comparing themselves to others. It is our job to support them to find their own thrive, not to make them feel better by dousing the flame of a kid who is shining.
The same happens in society. Many people will shine, and they may create fame and wealth. It is as unwise to try to quell their flame as it is to turn them into demi-gods. Many talented people, who create wealth, also create opportunity for others. Small business, in a thriving economy, is easy the biggest employer,
Extremism and Delusion
When we experience extremism on the Right, we see a loss of social support structures designed to keep those who are struggling out of poverty. Compassion seems to disappear. Big business grows more powerful, and politics is influenced by money. The mega wealthy become the elite, and workforces can become little more than slaves to “the man”.
When we see extremism on the Left, we experience “top down” ideas of how life should be. The so-called “oppressed” gain elevation to much higher levels of recognition, a reward normally directed to those who strive. Unearned recognition and reward become the norm, creating confusion for kids who find new ways to garner attention without effort. But the competition that exists when the Right are dominant is still there. It appears in the form of more highfalutin ideas and ideals about climate, gender, welfare, equality, inclusion, all designed to demonstrate virtue, righteousness, and moral elitism. Many of these are unnatural forces that can crush business and drive lower income workers back into poverty.
Power kills goodness, on both sides of politics. When too much power is given to people who have no clue about how to remain humble, the ship loses its rudder and sails off into stormy seas. We see what power did to Dan Andrews, Jacinda Ardern, Mark McGowan, and Anastacia Palaschuk during the pandemic. All went from popular to hated. The same happened to Jeff Kennett and Campbell Newman.
When too much power is granted to some individuals, they become intoxicated on their own fumes, lose touch with reality, and become delusional.
And there is a deadly blind spot. When a new party wins an election with a sweeping majority, and it is primarily because the electorate has completely lost faith in the former regime, the victorious party can believe they have a mandate for change. But perhaps they are there more by default. In one term they can destroy themselves as they realise, they have power, unearned power that was handed to them on a platter by a faltering opponent.
Where Are We Now?
Right now, across the world, the Left have been dominating politics for the past 5 to 10 years. The elites are no longer the wealthy, but the politically connected, which often includes the delusional idealists who wish to create artificial forms of equality to raise their moral credits and self-importance.
It seems the whole world is being seduced into ideas that are crushing the human spirit as governments become more and more dictatorial to see their agendas manifest.
But here is the cosmic joke. Super huge businesses, the gigantic equity funds, are seducing governments across the world into believing they support these high ideal yet deeply destructive policies, like ESG, DEI and Climate change, and in doing so, extracting trillions of dollars of public money to fund capital projects that generate huge corporate wealth.
And these big funds, who own the mainstream media, keep the glory seeking politicians in the spotlight, polishing their halos, and celebrating their importance.
But as the Italian, Dutch and Argentinian elections, and the Voice Referendum showed, Peter Tosh from Bob Marley and the wailers was right as he sang the third verse of “Get Up Stand Up”. “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time”.
It is high time for some personal responsibility. People of Australia. Get up! Stand up